Kyiv, October 16 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Up to 60% of heat could be saved in old buildings, and the energy audit should be conducted to know what to invest in, Manager of IFC Ukraine Residential Energy Efficiency Project Grzegorz Stefan Gajda has said.

"Taking into account IFC's experience in residential energy efficiency projects in the countries of Central Europe, we can point at one important thing: energy efficiency should be considered for buildings, not for apartments. Then we can speak about saving of gas and money. Experience shows that providing separate apartments with heat insulation the comfort of living in them could be increased, but we don't increase energy efficiency, we don’t save heat," he said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Wednesday.

Gajda said that the main task is the creation of a mechanism for effective decision-making by residents of apartment blocks on the realization of energy saving projects, which includes legal, financial and technological issues.

"The autonomous relations among apartments is a bad way, as due to the personal installation of heat insulation the misbalance of heat could appear: for example, it will be warm in one apartment and cold in the rest of apartments," he said.

Gajda said that first the automated heat supply regulators should be installed in the building, and then the internal heat pipelines are repaired and heat insulation is installed so that it was not necessary to release extra heat via windows.

He said that in Central Europe the installation of the personal heat meter is not practiced, as saving in the house with high energy efficiency is no more than 5%.

"For example, in Poland, in houses where a certain number of people live, they made the creation of home-owner associations obligatory, and relations between residents and the manager sent to the private market, and the state regulates only the monopoly services," Gajda said.

With the high cost of the installation of the automated equipment, repair of internal heat pipelines and installation of insulation, this results in the increase in the cost of apartments in the apartment block.

"For example, investing $50 per square meter in the increase of energy efficiency the price of an apartment in the building will grow by 10% [by $130 per square meter]," the representative of IFC said.

He said that several projects have been realized in Ukraine, one of them foresaw the installation of insulation, the heat regulator and the head meter using credit funds taken by the home-owner association.

Gajda said that at present Ukrgasbank, Bank Lviv and Metabank issue credits for increasing energy efficiency of apartment blocks at 17.5-25% per annum for the period up to five years.

The cost of the automated heat supply regulator for one building costs around UAH 300,000, and the installation of insulation for 100 apartments costs UAH 1.5-2 million. The payback period is around 20 years.